Tech —

Hello? Is this the iTunes 11 feature you’re looking for?

Ars OpenForum members get candid about Apple's reworked iTunes.

In January 2013, Apple’s iTunes will turn 12 years old, and it will celebrate its tween birthday with a brand new version: the recently released iTunes 11, which we reviewed earlier this week. Throughout its history, iTunes has evolved from music management and player software into a versatile program that sells, stores, and plays movies, podcasts, iOS apps, iOS devices, and—almost forgot—music. That means it's packed with many user interface elements and features that can take some time to discover. As Ars Technica readers in the OpenForum sift through the new release, they're discussing the new UI elements they find. Some UI features have stayed the same, and some have been overhauled. Here's what OpenForum members found.

Immediate reactions

The most active thread, titled "iTunes 11…Hello" started in late October, when iTunes 11 was announced. As the release became available for download, users began to identify the differences in this new version. Sysbcl says, “First thoughts: Wow, fast! Really, really fast. Can't turn on album art in sidebar? ￼ I'll miss that.”

Right away, users noted that fonts, icons, and graphical elements received an overhaul. Badam badamsaid, “Fonts are wrong, and the app just doesnt feel Mac-like (menus, switching views…).” philhnoted that "Font seems consistent with FCPX and retina iPhoto, unusual but not unprecedented."

Cover art is important to many users, and Chucky Chesthairlamented the changes Apple made in how iTunes displays it: “In song view, there is no more coverflow, just the songs, no artwork whatsoever. In album view, you only have the grid view. In the view options you can choose the sorting, not the view though. (Song view still has the "album by artist/year" option to sort, luckily.) The display of the current song is now a miniature one, no longer the resizable artwork in the left bottom corner. By default, the sidebar is no longer visible."

As Apple has expanded its iCloud service into iTunes, it has also implemented changes to allow users to re-download content they already purchased. In iTunes 11, things didn’t seem to work so well for cateye: “The iCloud listings were a little confusing at first. I avoid buying music from iTunes, although I did buy a few albums back in the protected 128kbps AAC days. Those albums were listed twice: The iCloud versions, and my new versions. Simple enough to select and delete the cloud versions, however (yes, I know you can turn off the iCloud listings altogether, but I do like them for TV shows and Movies, which I do still use the iTunes Store for).”

Meglet’s review of iTunes listed some positive changes: “I am AMAZED that I can actually scroll through my entire library in album view now. Previously, it would skip, jump, hang, and eventually just choke trying to scroll through the pages, and I only have about 90GB of music. Now it's smooth as butter, and I am (again, surprisingly) rather entranced with that new flyout view when clicking an album. I actually like the custom background color to match the artwork, too. And I find "Up Next" more useful than I thought, although since I usually live in Playlists I doubt I'll use it much…New MiniPlayer is at least not a step backwards, although really anything is an improvement over the old MiniPlayer.”

UX and UI matter

Elswehere in the OpenForum, readers took another approach to talking about the user interface changes in the thread “iTunes 11 is here - Heuristic UI criticisms too!” This thread is also useful for those who might need help troubleshooting issues with Airplay, remotes, and managing libraries. You can always count on other users to help answer some of your questions.

Though not exactly a heuristic review, this thread does highlight the observations of seasoned iTunes 11 users. Mr. Kruegerweighs in: “I'm generally liking the new UI more than not. Things like the easy switching to all of the genres in my music library is frickin' amazing, as that means I can dump all of my Smart Playlists that just loaded all of one genre. Fairly nice improvement in performance all around too.”

9600Man really likes the new miniplayer: “The mini-player is pretty sweet. Clicking on the album art brings up a QT-looking window with QT controls and the album art as the background. ￼Would make sense if I could full screen (I can scale up and down the image size.) Otherwise, other than the visual, it seems a bit redundant to have both:”

Users who enjoyed randomized play in the main window will have to do without it. It’s gone from iTunes 11. “I too am disappointed that I can't get the randomized play order in the main window,” Nutrimentiasays.

ITunes 11 contains UI changes that users are still encountering as they tailor their workflow to manage media and sync with devices. Are you finding other issues not covered yet by the OpenForum? Register for an account to participate in the discussion, or share your thoughts in the comments below.

Cesar Torres
Cesar is the Social Editor at Ars Technica. His areas of expertise are in online communities, human-computer interaction, usability, and e-reader technology. Cesar lives in New York City. Emailcesar.torres@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Urraca

62 Reader Comments

“I too am disappointed that I can't get the randomized play order in the main window,” Nutrimentia says.

You can get randomized play by going to the list view, playing music and switching to the main view. Sadly it doesn't keep track of the current song but you can use the shortcut cmd+L to see what's now playing without it switching to the list view.

This feels to me like the transition for iMovie HD to iMovie 08, or FCP 7 to FCP X (in a good way). Apple has taken the time to simplify and re-think the layout, added some cool features, and moved or removed some features they probably should have kept. The advantage of this, is it give them a really strong new base from wich to continue to refine and improve. Over time we will end up with something that really does what the legacy code and UI couldn't.

I really like the focus on iCloud integration. It shows that, one way or another, Apple really want music in the cloud to be a part of the future of iTunes. Hopefully, this leads to streaming and subscription options that rival Pandora, Spotify, and Rdio.

The interface is much cleaner and much more focused on the task at hand. The only thing that really sticks out, is the fact that you still manage your iOS device settings and syncing through a media player app. The interface for that is even a little cleaner, but it's a bit of a legacy system, that they clearly haven't worked passed just yet.

I agree with daguerratype. They simplified almost all aspects of iTunes from the last version. I HATED the sidebar. It always just struck me as, like we used to say in the Army, a cluster**k. I haven't had any issues with the new version except it took me a few minutes to find how to sync my iPad to my MBP's iTunes library for newly purchased music. Overall, I'm very happy with the iTunes 11.

Switched to Linux, so I can't have iTunes. Banshee is a great player, but I miss having an integrated store. The iTunes feature that I would be the most interested in is a Linux port (yeah, I know; not going to happen) or better Wine compatability.

And you still can't right click on a (playlist|album|song) and cause something in iTunes over here to be on an iDevice over there. The sidebar was the only way to manage a manually loaded iDevice before, so they fixed that by hiding the sidebar and replacing it with "good luck finding your damn sidebar".

I guess someday I'll have to get a piece of paper and write down what's on my device, nuke it, and redo everything in a more "managed" way. If only there were some software algorithm to convert an unmanaged list of music that entirely came from one iTunes library into a set of checkboxes in the same damn iTunes library. Maybe that intractable logic problem would make a good captcha?

I'm just glad they brought back the ability to change the volume by hovering the mouse over the volume control area and using the scroll-wheel. For some reason this had been missing in iTunes 10 for me, despite having been there in earlier versions. That volume control is a tiny target to have to click and drag, so it's a nice little feature to have back.

Otherwise, overall I haven't found anything that I don't particularly like about the new interface. Generally, now that I'm over the initial "what the hell happened to my iTunes?" shock, I'm rather happy with it.

Any word on whether it constantly creates duplicates in the library still? I only have an ipod so I switched to media monkey for syncing because of this. Always hated iTunes and saw it as the one downside to my ipod, and a contributing reason for not owning other apple products (Not a complete hater as my ipod is hands down my longest running device that I still use daily, 8 years) but the 1st gen ipod touch I bought second hand hasn't been touched since I got a smartphone.

iCloud integration is worthless to me, because it would cost $$$$ for hosting my 380gb library of MP3's. as a musician and former dj, I have a lot of music, and iTunes 10 and prior had issues with such a large library. Not sure if 11 is an improvement yet but it seems ok so far.

I'm just glad they brought back the ability to change the volume by hovering the mouse over the volume control area and using the scroll-wheel. For some reason this had been missing in iTunes 10 for me, despite having been there in earlier versions. That volume control is a tiny target to have to click and drag, so it's a nice little feature to have back.

Otherwise, overall I haven't found anything that I don't particularly like about the new interface. Generally, now that I'm over the initial "what the hell happened to my iTunes?" shock, I'm rather happy with it.

Ha! I had no idea you could do this, but checked and confirmed and now I know a neat new trick. Thanks!

I love this new version. I have used iTunes for many years now, and don't understand why it has such a bad reputation. I've got almost 40GB worth of music and never experience lag issues or anything along those lines.

I will say, I'm glad I watched the little intro video they included immediately after installation. That definitely made figuring out the interface a little easier, and a little quicker.

The new interface makes a lot of sense to me. I'm glad to be writing something positive about Apple, considering just about everything they've done over the past year has struck me as odd or illogical. This new UI is refreshing, and the speed improvements are most welcome.

And you still can't right click on a (playlist|album|song) and cause something in iTunes over here to be on an iDevice over there. The sidebar was the only way to manage a manually loaded iDevice before, so they fixed that by hiding the sidebar and replacing it with "good luck finding your damn sidebar".

iTunes 11 makes this so much easier! As soon as you start to drag a song, album, playlist, whatever, a sidebar pops up on the right with all connected iOS devices as well as a list of playlists. It slides away automatically when you're done.

You can also simplify the new "destination" pane by going to the device in the dropdown and clicking "Add to". This locks iTunes into a browsing mode where you can just drag new items right to that device until you click the "done" button.

Quote:

I guess someday I'll have to get a piece of paper and write down what's on my device, nuke it, and redo everything in a more "managed" way.

iTunes 11 is good for users with small screens who don't use AirPlay and are not DJs. The new UI, which clearly is yet another move towards iOS, works better for small screens. Unfortunately, when I played music via AirPlay onto my Apple TV, it crashed 4 times in an hour. This is even worse than iTunes 10.7, and clearly shows that iTunes is the culprit, not Apple TV, as many suspect. It's funny that AirPlay works so well for video, but crashes so often for audio. I would advise NOT using Apple TV to access your iTunes library. Do it the other way around -- push it from iTunes to Apple TV via AirPlay. That way, if it does crash, it will be up and running in 5 seconds (albeit without the album artwork). That said, doing it both ways, iTunes 11 crashes AirPlay far more often than it's predecessor. Hopefully they will fix it. It used to work fine until the big Apple TV release shortly after iOS 5 came out in 2011.

DJs will lament the removal of iTunes DJ and the gapless playback editor. I know a fair number of DJs that use iTunes, which contains their entire music collection. They should stick with 10.7 for now.

I wrote a review of iTunes on my site... Check it out if you want to read more.

Switched to Linux, so I can't have iTunes. Banshee is a great player, but I miss having an integrated store. The iTunes feature that I would be the most interested in is a Linux port (yeah, I know; not going to happen) or better Wine compatability.

Apparently, iTunes runs under WINE on Linux. I know people who run Linux and use iTunes. I have a few Linux machines (CentOS and Ubuntu), but for my main machine, I prefer OS X. It has all the UNIX goodness, with a nice, user-friendly UI. The lack of mainstream apps for Linux had me buy a Mac for my Java EE programming... (although I moved on to Rails...)

It's nice that I could run Windows on my Mac, but I have not yet had the need...

I miss the ability to go to the app store and click "Add to wish list" for free apps. Being on a download bandwidth limit, and having around 40K apps, I don't know if I already have 'em already and don't need to download it.

Worked in iTunes 10, gone in iTunes 11. I want it back.

Edit: If you attempted to add to wishlist an app you already bought, it popped up an error. Otherwise it just added to your wishlist. Of course, the old behaviour where it would change the button from "Free Download" (if you didn't have it) to "Download Again" or "Downloaded" (if you had it, not on this machine, or have it, also on this machine) was the best, but that went away a few years ago...).

It still syncs correctly with only one machine. Without a very klugy workaround using Dropbox or similar, you can't keep music, apps, etc, synced between two or more computers. It's just stupid. Likewise it doesn't deal well with imported audio files, marking everything as music, and offering no obvious way to change things. Even now I can't convert 60 language files from music to something else.

It still syncs correctly with only one machine. Without a very klugy workaround using Dropbox or similar, you can't keep music, apps, etc, synced between two or more computers.

I just have everything in the cloud, and have done so for a year. That way, my wife and I share the same music library between our two computers, two iPhones and our iPad. Apps are shared too.

If we add something to iTunes, then next time we're in the car, we can just play it straight from an iPhone, totally seamlessly. If I'm at work and want to listen to music, my whole library is there on my iPhone, without taking up all the internal storage.

I haven't noticed any issues at all with it. It's handled everything I've thrown at it. These days, if I download an app on my iPhone, my wife's phone even pops up a message asking if she wants it too.

I'd like for my Apple hardware to work perfectly without any Apple software on a different system required.

That is exactly the opposite of what the devices, their software and the associated services are designed for.

TheFu wrote:

I'd like to interface with Apple hardware using only F/LOSS software and open-data methods.

You can try that, but due to the above you will be entirely on your own with that, with zero support from Apple, of course, including zero guarantees that any of your provisional workarounds will stay viable across future firmware updates.

In short: Apple's products are simply not the ones you're looking for.

After all these years they still haven’t got rid of those annoying modal dialogs... this is especially annoying when buffering a stream from the store or “radio,” just pops a big dialog on front of what I’m doing... Arrgg!

“I too am disappointed that I can't get the randomized play order in the main window,” Nutrimentia says.

You can get randomized play by going to the list view, playing music and switching to the main view. Sadly it doesn't keep track of the current song but you can use the shortcut cmd+L to see what's now playing without it switching to the list view.

You mean "Shuffle", right? I have that in all my views. If you don't, that sounds like a bug. Try Controls > Shuffle > Turn on Shuffle. Also, switch between shuffling by songs, albums, or groupings. Seems to work fine for me.

iTunes 11 is good for users with small screens who don't use AirPlay and are not DJs.

I'm not a DJ. In fact I work in IT, which is another group Apple shows little appreciation for.

iTunes DJ is the only mode I've used for music playback for years. Thank God, I installed iTunes 11 on my work issued Dell first. I'd imagine it'd be harder to get iTunes 10 re-installed on an OSX system.

I have ~50 hours of music videos on my file server at home. Some of them are now in "movies" for some reason (they weren't before).

While I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago, my outlook on computers is mostly unchanged. In the future I want things that:Can do what my current devices can or more.Do it faster and preferably with less steps.

Up until the last few years, things seemed to be heading in that direction. However, both Apple and Microsoft seem to be hell-bent on making computers less functional than they were previously.

Dumbing down the devices used by the engineers and power-users who create everything and keep it running in order to better serve the masses seems counter-productive in the long term.

The changes to iTunes (other than the obvious under-the-hood performance improvements) seem to be a manifestation of this misguided push towards turning computers into an appliances.

And you still can't right click on a (playlist|album|song) and cause something in iTunes over here to be on an iDevice over there. The sidebar was the only way to manage a manually loaded iDevice before, so they fixed that by hiding the sidebar and replacing it with "good luck finding your damn sidebar".

Things like the easy switching to all of the genres in my music library is frickin' amazing, as that means I can dump all of my Smart Playlists that just loaded all of one genre.

... You could do this before. Turn on the column browser and place it at the top. Genre was one of the columns (first one I believe). iTunes 11 just made by-genre browsing a button and less hidden.

Quote:

The display of the current song is now a miniature one, no longer the resizable artwork in the left bottom corner. By default, the sidebar is no longer visible.

True, but, like the corner widget, clicking on the little artwork in the top display (mini or full view) brings up a new window with that artwork; in iTunes 11 that artwork window also includes playback controls on hover over, which I don't believe iTunes 10 did.

Quote:

The iCloud listings were a little confusing at first. I avoid buying music from iTunes, although I did buy a few albums back in the protected 128kbps AAC days. Those albums were listed twice: The iCloud versions, and my new versions.

Yes, you can delete the iCloud "versions", or delete the local versions and redownload the iCloud version. I believe all those old 128kbps AAC files have been "upgraded" for you in iCloud to 256kbps (it's been so long since I did this I forget if that was just iCloud or after subscribing to iTunes Match that did that, though). Keep your versions if they're higher bitrate than the Apple iTunes ones, of course.

There are some missing features (duplicates, for example, although that is reportedly coming back in a pending update), but I think for the most part people need to give the new UI a bit more of a chance. Things have moved around, and workflows have changed; find the "new way" Apple intends for your particular task to be done before complaining about how they took away the feature you need.

True, but, like the corner widget, clicking on the little artwork in the top display (mini or full view) brings up a new window with that artwork; in iTunes 11 that artwork window also includes playback controls on hover over, which I don't believe iTunes 10 did.

I'd like for my Apple hardware to work perfectly without any Apple software on a different system required.I'd like to interface with Apple hardware using only F/LOSS software and open-data methods.

Good luck with that. Apple being Apple, the underpinnings of OS X have roots in OSS software, of course. Beyond that, they don't want you playing if you're not in their garden.

I remember a few years ago I won an iPod shuffle in a work competition. Figuring it would be like the average media player, I intended on using like any other. But no - it wouldn't work at all in any fashion without iTunes and all its associated BS. I ended up selling it to my boss, who gave it to his daughter.

Also, for those that want it native in Linux - good luck with that, too. If Apple couldn't even be bothered to develop a relatively decent version for the OS with 90+ percent marketshare, what makes you think they'll bother at all for the an OS with less than 2%? Their attitude entirely is if you want their software, buy their hardware. After all, they're really a hardware company. Given their low marketshare in the PC world, they develop software because they have no choice. Too bad they won't open up and let others hook into iTunes' APIs, though - I'm sure there would be tens of thousands of devs eagerly slavering to make a better version of iTunes. (But then, most of those would likely be worse, and would be 'diluting the brand', so that won't happen, either.)

It may not have been an intentional scheme on Apple's part, but I've heard from people that have bought Apple PCs precisely because they figured they would work better with their iDevices. As time goes on and their Windows machines need to be replaced, they get replaced with more Apple. (Although, entertainingly, the start to rethink that when the original Apple devices need to be replaced and now they can't stomach dropping better than $1500 on a replacement.)

I like listening to "Get Up!" by Korn when my 5 year old daughter is _not_ home.

The Annihilator/Gwar gets on my wife's nerves, so I remove that from the iTunes DJ's upcoming songs when she is home.

The following anecdote might better illustrate what I'm trying to say..

A couple of months ago while driving to visit a comatose family member in a hospice, Pantara's "Hollow" came on the radio. I love the song, but it was all I could do drive the car to the hospice.

It's naive to suggest that the issue of addressing wide musical tastes and whatever life throws at us can be solved with a playlist for every occasion. I'd certainly never make a "Grandma's dying in a coma, don't play "Hollow" playlist.

Edit:Further, iTunes DJ can address the mood of both my wife and I (or whomever else is at my hosue) for this on a day by day basis. On a few occasions, I've had as many as 3 or 4 people removing things from a DJ playlist they didn't want to hear (Laptop connected to the stereo).

iTunes used to play the next podcast automatically. Now, I have to create smart playlist if I want to listen to them in succession. And with iOS 6, iTunes either can't seem to sync podcasts correctly (duplicates, inadvertent deletions, partial syncs, etc.) or the Podcasts app is pretty broken. After every sync I have to correct the syncing errors. Weirdly, this doesn't happen with music.